Bad Day
by Queen Edmund Pevensie
Summary: Season Seven. Everyone has bad days. It's just Sam's bad days are a whole lot worse. Sometimes, Dean has bad days too.


**A/N: I have some sort of obsession with Sam during season seven, and it's unhealthy, but it lead to this, which is okay, because this turned out to be less about Sam, and more about Sam and Dean. **

**A/N2: That being said, I think this is the best Dean I've ever written. Let me know.  
**

**Disclaimer: So I don't own Supernatural, but I sure do pay attention.  
**

**Bad Days   
**

Since the wall came down, Sam had good days and Sam had bad day. Some days they could work and some days they couldn't.

And the most complicated problem in their life became the simplest.

_(Supernatural: Bad Days)_

On good days, Sam got up, and drank coffee, and Dean threw things at him until Sam ate breakfast, and Sam threw things at Dean until Dean ate breakfast.

If they had a job, they'd do research until Dean got bored and went to get lunch, and Sam wouldn't notice until Dean came back. Sometimes Sam ate lunch, sometimes he didn't.

They'd go to some place that only just passed as a diner that served what only passed as food for dinner after some more investigating.

If they were ready to kill the sucker, they went and killed the sucker, usually and hopefully with minimal injuries, and went back to the motel and slept for four hours and got up and did it again.

If they didn't have a job, they'd look for strange and nasty deaths, and/or close calls, and/or freak accidents. Anything strange or nasty was right up their alley.

Sometimes, they looked for a case in the car, and Sam would read it to Dean while Dean drove, and Dean would complain, but Sam knew he didn't really mean it, but he'd bitch at Dean, just for the sake of bitching.

They would argue for whole car rides, eight, nine hours a day, but with no hurt feelings, and when they went to bed that night they wouldn't even remember what they had been arguing about.

The next morning, they would get up and Sam would drink coffee and Dean would drink whiskey, and things were thrown until they both had breakfast.

It was simple, but it was what they had both missed since Dean back from Hell, or maybe even before that. Just the two of them and the Impala, bickering about things as trivial as movies and snacks.

And neither of them cared at all that the world was crashing down around them.

_(Supernatural: Bad Days)_

Of course, there were times Dean was having a bad day, where he felt like he couldn't go on, and it didn't matter if they saved the world or not. The world would just find another way to screw itself, and, as a result, them. That's all the world had been doing for the past few years.

On Dean's bad days, he'd get up and not eat breakfast and Sam would do all the research, and Dean would leave and come back later and vaguely inquire into Sam's wellbeing and his progress.

Then, they'd go to dinner and Dean wouldn't make fun of Sam's food choices and Dean would eat even though he wasn't hungry really.

If they had a hunt that night, Dean would get the job done and panic a couple of times because what if _this _time Sam called his name he wasn't okay, and every time Sam _was _okay he'd feel a wave of relief quickly followed by a much stronger flood of anger, because why did Sam have to panic him like that?

If they weren't busy killing things that night, than Dean would go to a bar alone and Sam would do more research until he fell asleep at his laptop.

Sometimes, Dean had a bad day on the road, and Sam would try to talk to him, but Dean would get so frustrated, he'd tell Sam to shut up, but it'd come out so wrong, and Sam would shut up, and Dean would realize he didn't mean it, but he couldn't take it back, so they would sit there in a tiny space that suddenly seemed too small and too big at the same time, they silence between them neither friend nor comfortable. That silence would be too loud and too heavy and filled with Sam angsting and brooding. And once, Dean felt some of his own angst and brood fighting for a spot.

Dean would want to apologize, but it would just get lost in all of the misunderstandings filling that tiny and giant space between them.

The next morning, they would pretend it never happened.

_(Supernatural: Bad Days) _

Sam had bad days too. His bad days came less and less often as the year progressed, but he made up for having less bad days than Dean by the badness of such days.

Sure, Sam had days where he'd be miserable all day (comes with the job), but Sam never stopped fighting. Feeling (understandably) like the world was ending wasn't enough to make Sam stay in bed.

In fact, Hell's worst nightmares couldn't even do that.

_(Supernatural: Bad Days)_

On Sam's bad days, things could go a hell of a lot of different ways. "Bad days" could start at any time during the day, and Dean knew it wasn't Sammy's fault, and if they were in public when Sam had a bad-day-feeling (or a Hell feeling) he would be Sam Winchester, stone-cold (puppy dog eyed) hunter, until they (always they) were in public no longer. Sometimes, it was just a feeling and it passed before Hell got out of hand.

Some days weren't so bad they (always they) couldn't work. Other were so bad, Sammy was too scared to even move if Dean wasn't there.

Those days were the worst.

Those days didn't happen very often after the initial demolition either.

Generally, Sam's bad days were in between.

He'd sleep longer if there were no nightmares, and sometimes Dean would have to wake him up so Sam wouldn't sleep through the whole day (which Dean personally didn't think was such a bad thing, but Sam had different ideas), and when he woke he'd be disoriented for a minute, usually.

It was more than just I-slept-for-twelve-hours-what-year-is-it-oh-wait-I-remember-now grogginess. It was I-slept-for-twelve-hours-that-felt-like-two-hundred-years-how-old-am-I-and-why-am-I-still-tired-oh-god-I-can't-remember-my-name-where-is-Dean-where-am-I disoriented. For a whole sixty seconds. Usually.

Dean would be there and greet him with, "Good morning. Breakfast?" and if Sam looked at the clock and nodded or said, "It's three pm, don't patronize me, Dean, I'm not helpless," and Dean grunted in response, because he didn't actually care as long as Sam ate, they could go out.

But if Sam looked at Dean and said, "yeah," without bothering to see that it was three pm, or without looking at anything but Dean (or even worse, looking everywhere but Dean) then Dean thought maybe going out right away might not be the greatest idea. (Sometimes Sam looked at the clock, saw it was in fact three pm and nodded, and then Dean resisted the urge to protect Sam the way he did when Sammy was still small enough for cuddling to be acceptable.)

Dean would sigh, and if Sam jumped then they would definite have to wait to go out, but he'd still ask Sammy if he wanted to got out for breakfast.

And if Sammy said yes, they went, even if it was three am (which it never was) and even if Dean thought staying home (or in) was a better idea.

Sometimes, especially when they still had the Impala, Sam would fall right back to sleep in the car like he was eight, and so Dean would drive around a little more (because Dean was calmer if Sam was well rested, and he is an awesome brother) until Sam woke up, still tired, still with an endless headache, but hungry now, too.

"Ready?" Dean would ask, and Sam would nod and try to get himself reoriented before he left the safety of the car.

Sometimes though, they couldn't leave their room and they'd sit at the table and Dean would do research and talk to Sam (whether Sam talked back or not) until Sam got frustrated with dean and took over research, and then Dean would poke and prod Sam to take a break and eat something. (Dean's main objective in life from the time he was four was to make sure Sam eats, sleeps, and uses the bathroom. Thankfully, Dean stopped asking Sam if he has to use the bathroom by the time Sam was sixteen.)

Unless Sam didn't take over. But still, Dean sat there at the table with Sam and started to do things to purposely aggravate him, and Sam would forget about Hell for a little, and they'd talk about things that had nothing to do with hunting.

Other days, which were only a step behind "worst," Sam would sit with Dean and eat breakfast, but he'd be jumpy all day, and he couldn't concentrate on Dean, or anything really.

It was like a wave of Hell, or several waves of Hell, a cloudy, thick, hopeless, rough wave of Hell could wash over him at anytime, and he'd check out, and maybe he'd come back to Dean, who stopped showing how scared he was every time it happened, who was still talking, who always kept talking no matter what.

Even when Sam was so scared and so hopeless that no matter how hard he pressed on his car, it didn't pass, if he could find Dean's voice, Dean's real voice than he could latch onto it and Dean could pull him out of the murky waters of Hell. Just like Sam wanted to do when Dean came back from Hell.

Dean wasn't the anchor that held him in reality, Dean was the life-preserver who threw himself overboard into Hell's treacherous waters to keep Sam afloat.

Dean was always there when Sam had a bad day, or moment, or week, or anything. Even if he wasn't Sam knew, Sam always knew, that if he needed Dean, Dean might grumble and complain, but he'd be there. Because he was Dean. Dean was always there.

_(Supernatural: Bad Days)_

Sam was strong. He was, by far, the strongest person Dean had ever known. Forty years in Hell had broken Dean, but one-hundred-plus-yeas in a considerably worse Hell had left Sam as strong as ever. So what if sometimes Sam wasn't always completely grounded in reality? It happened like once every two months. He kept fighting, everyday. He never gave up. He even felt _better_ than he had in years. _(Earth _years, though, but obviously Hell years too.)

So Dean never brought up the bad days after they were over. And Sam kept on fighting.

So Dean was never far behind.


End file.
